Power electronics devices are used in a wide variety of applications, including motor drives, converters, inverters, active front end filters and Variable Speed Constant Frequency (VSCF) power conversion. Although the amount of heat produced by each device will typically vary from application to application, increasing packaging densities has made thermal management an increasingly critical design consideration.
Typically, each power electronics device has an associated heat sink or cooler in order to maintain the temperature of the device within an acceptable range. The amount of heat dissipated by the cooler depends on both the size as well as the design of the cooler. Some examples of heat sink or cooler designs include pin-fin, plate fin, or other designs. Examples of cooler designs can be found in U.K. Pat. No. GB 2,278,307B, U.S. Pat. No. 5,380,956, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,559,580. Once the amount of heat produced by the electronics device is known, a designer must construct a cooler having the ability to reject the heat produced by the component to the coolant medium (e.g., air or liquid) within an acceptable temperature difference. If the rise in cooler temperature is too large for the environment temperature, then the electronics component will overheat. Thus, the designer must decide on an appropriate cooler design, and must then determine the size of the cooler based on the heat dissipation properties of the chosen cooler design.
Despite all these design variables, it would nevertheless be desirable to construct many different power electronics devices for many different applications using a standardized packaging concept in order to decrease production costs. Ideally, such a modular packaging concept would permit the use of any one of a variety of cooler designs, all having the same or similar dimensions, in order to achieve the proper amount of heat dissipation dictated by the thermal production of the associated power electronics device. Using a modular packaging concept with standardized dimensions, the designer may obtain greater cooling capacity simply by adding additional (or higher performance) cooler units. In order to achieve even greater production efficiency, such a modular packaging concept could be adapted for use with a standardized coolant manifold constructed to accept any power electronics device constructed in accordance with the standardized dimensions, regardless of the type of heat sink integrated into the power electronics device.